The 3p a litre increase will now be delayed until August, when an additional, inflation linked rise worth an estimated 5p a litre was to have taken place.

Drivers, who had faced paying an extra 8p a litre in tax by the end of the year, will now have to find only an additional 3p.

Mr Osborne, who cut fuel tax by 1p a litre in his budget last year, has said the changes would save the average family £144 a year.

Despite calls from motoring groups for further cuts, Treasury officials suggested that Mr Osborne had ruled out any further help to struggling motorists.

The decision risks sparking a new row with drivers and hauliers who claim record pump prices are hitting families and holding back the economy.

Officials say the Chancellor has already provided more than £4bn to help motorists and has found that there are no further funds available for tax cuts.

He has also scrapped Labour’s “escalator”, which raised fuel duty by 1p above inflation every year, which is now index-linked.

“Petrol prices have remained within a 5p range for some time,” one of Mr Osborne’s aides told the Financial Times.

“The price is a lot lower than it would have otherwise been if we had not intervened. We have no plans to change what we said at the autumn statement.”

Mr Osborne’s early intervention is seen as a strategy to neutralise a growing campaign to cut fuel duty.

There are fears the August rise in fuel duty could push up the price of everyday items such as food as farmers and supermarkets attempt to recoup the higher costs of transporting goods.

Diesel prices reached new highs of 143.71p per litre at the pumps this week while the average price of petrol at the pumps last week was 135p a litre.

This means that £5.84 to the monthly fuel bill for a two-car family since the start of the year.

The AA expects petrol prices to exceed last May’s record of 143.04p per litre over the coming days amid a weak Pound and rising price of crude oil linked to the unrest throughout the Middle East.

It has also been suggested that fuel duty will increase by 4p per litre on August 1, 2012, including VAT.

The Retail Motor Industry (RMI), the petrol retailers’ association, said higher prices could affect plans to tackle inflation and place “the livelihoods of hundreds of fuel retailers at further risk".

“This is causing a lot of pain for businesses, especially small haulage companies who find it difficult to pass on the price increase to customers,” said Brian Madderson, the RMI Petrol chairman.

In a letter to Mr Osborne, the AA’s president Edmund King called for the government to abandon its planned hikes because the “private car is, for most people, a necessity not a luxury”.

Latest figures show the average British car driver travelled 165 miles fewer in 2011 than in the previous year because of rising petrol prices.

A Treasury spokesman said on Friday night: "The Government's position on fuel duty was set out at the Autumn Statement and it already includes over £4 billion worth of help for motorists across two years."